The Day After

Where do we go from here? Once again the Vikings were knocking on the door. But once again, the door was open waiting for them to walk in, but they stumbled over themselves and never made it in. The Saints did not beat the Vikings yesterday, the Vikings beat themselves. An interception with :18 seconds left when you have a 53 yard field goal in your back pocket. And prior to that we took a "too many men in the huddle" penalty. Add in the fumbles, and they found a way to lose. So where do we go from here?
This team will be good next year. There are a lot of pieces in place. They have a very young receiving core. I'm not sure about their free agency status, but the Vikings have to go into the year as one of the favorites in the NFC.
Will Brett Favre be back, and do we want him? I know what he did this year. But you have to ask, at what point will he get old. He's already the oldest QB to win a post-season game, so are we going to push that envelope. This year was a lot of fun. As a passionate Vikings fan, this was a fun ride. I loved watching Brett Favre play this year. But can we trust him in an important spot in a playoff game. The last two NFC championship's he's thrown two costly interceptions. And they weren't tipped balls or something fluky like that. They were mistakes that cost his team the opportunity to win. Now in fairness he's the reason we got that far. But is he still capable of taking a team any further? He's not a young quarterback that is coming into his prime. If Mark Sanchez made that throw, we'd understand, and hope that it only helps him in the future. But what is the future for Brett Favre at 41. At the same point, what are the options for the Vikings at QB. If it's not Brett Favre, who is it? Do we draft somebody and ride a rookie? Or do we hope that Sage Rosenfals or Tavarius Jackson learned something from Favre. The QB question will be the biggest question going forward.
We have an All-Pro running back that can not hang onto the ball. So when does he become a liability? It's hard to put him in the game when you have to score at the end of the game. It used to be that we'd wait for him to break a tackle or two and run for 50 yards. Now we're waiting for him to put the ball on the ground. I don't know based on his running style if it's possible to solve the problem.
So where do we go from here? We've now had 152 professional seasons with the Vikings, Twins, Wild, North Stars, and Timberwolves. And we have two championships to speak of. That is a winning percentage of .013. So maybe we should change our expectations. We're Minnesotans, we appreciate hard work, and pride ourselves on being nice. So maybe we should enjoy a season like this and be thankful we got this far. We just seem to be in some never ending slump. I mean it rained on Hockey Day Minnesota, in January. That sums up life in Minnesota.
A loss like this is tough to swallow. You watch the game and the season, and your expectations start to build. I sat there yesterday holding my 2 month old son, and we were watching the final Vikings drive in regulation. I told Rusty that this was the year we were going to go to the super bowl. This was why we had Brett Favre, for this drive in this situation. Everything was going as planned. And then it all fell apart. He's too young to be disappointed. He's too young to take a shot of tequila and slam a beer. So I took a shot for him and me. So what am I going to do? I'm going to let it sink in for a couple of days. And then I'm going to look ahead to next year. Start my off-season conditioning. The way I prepare for the annual Vikings let down, is by watching the Twins win 25 of their last 30 games to win the division and then get drilled by the Yankees in the playoffs. Maybe the Timberwolves and Wild do it right. Don't expect anything from us, and we'll never let you down.
I saw a post on facebook from a frequent blog reader and he stated it perfectly, "Someday . . . . "